Home // International Journal On Advances in Software, volume 7, numbers 3 and 4, 2014 // View article


A Hybrid Ant Colony and Branch-and-Cut Algorithm to Solve the Container Stacking Problem at Seaport Terminal

Authors:
Ndèye Fatma Ndiaye
Adnan Yassine
Ibrahima Diarrassouba

Keywords: Ant colony algorithm; Branch-and-cut; Container storage problem; Hybridization; Mathematical modelling.

Abstract:
The container storage problem is one of the most studied issues regarding seaports. It is a relevant problem due to the fact that the effectiveness of a storage yard management affects the global productivity of the port. Therefore, various attempts were done in order to elaborate efficient decision support systems, which concern specific container terminals and specific transfer and handing equipments. Most of the existing proposed methods use heuristic or meta-heuristic algorithms because the NP-hardness of the container storage problem makes it difficult to solve using exact optimization methods mainly when there are a lot of containers. In this paper, we combine an exact resolution method (branch-and-cut) and a meta-heuristic algorithm (ant colony) in a hybrid ant colony and branch-and-cut algorithm (HACBC). Numerical simulations prove the efficiency and the effectiveness of our algorithm.

Pages: 567 to 580

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2014. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 30, 2014

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2628